心理学版本的心想事成。说白了就是：你对别人友好，别人就喜欢你；你要是怕别人对你不友好，自己先把架子摆起来，对方可就真不喜欢你了。

The mystical-sounding 'acceptance prophecy' is simply this: when we think other people are going to like us, we behave more warmly towards them and consequently they like us more. When we think other people aren't going to like us, we behave more coldly and they don't like us as much.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because if we predict acceptance we get it, if not we don't. It's also an intuitively appealing explanation for how people come to like （or dislike） each other. But the question for psychologists is whether it is really true or just a neat fairy story.

The waters are, of course, muddied by all the usual individual and cultural differences-some people care more about other's acceptance and some people are naturally more accepting-but let's set those aside for a moment and just imagine two people who are identical except that one expects others to accept her and one expects others to reject her.

What the research has found, according to a new paper just published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, is that one part of the acceptance prophecy has strong evidence to support it, while the other part does not. Until now.

The first part, in a model put forward by Dr Danu Anthony Stinson at the University of Waterloo and colleagues, is that the interpersonal warmth people project predicts how much others like them （Stinson et al., 2009）. For psychologists this is uncontroversial; people take better to others who are genuinely warm with accurate judgements about their warmth made in only 30 seconds （Ambady et al., 2000）.

Pleased to meet you

What has proved more controversial is whether anticipating acceptance really does increase the interpersonal warmth that people project towards others. It's this question that Stinson et al. （2009） set out to test by manipulated people's expectations about a person they were about to meet for the first time.

They told 14 of 28 men recruited for their study that the attractive woman they were going to meet was nervous and worried about how she would be perceived by them. Quite naturally when these men found that the woman was nervous and insecure it made them feel better in comparison. This had the effect of making the men much less anxious about the interaction （actually about half as nervous as judged by independent observers） and consequently much warmer.

In comparison the other 14 sweaty-palmed participants were only given basic demographic information about the woman they were going to talk to, nothing that would calm their fears of rejection. This manipulation created two groups, then, one that was anticipating acceptance more than the other.

What the results showed was that when the risk of rejection was lower, men acted more warmly towards the woman to whom they were talking. This extra warmth also lead to a panel of observers liking them more in comparison with those who were more fearful of risk and therefore interpersonally colder.

So this provides evidence that the acceptance prophecy holds true. In this experiment people who expected to be accepted did act more warmly towards a stranger and consequently they were perceived as more likeable.

Social optimist or pessimist?

There was an exception, though, to the results of this study. One sub-group were not affected by the experimental manipulation to increase how much they expected to be accepted. That's because they already expected to be accepted. These are the social optimists （or at least people who think rather a lot of themselves!）.

Social optimists, of course, are in the happy position of expecting to be accepted and finding that, generally speaking, they are. Social pessimists, though, face the dark side of what sociologist Robert K. Merton-who coined the expression 'self-fulfilling prophecy'-has called a 'reign of error'. Expectation of rejection leads to the projection of colder, more defensive behaviour towards others, and this leads to actual rejection. "Uh-huh," mutters the social pessimist, "I knew they wouldn't like me".

And so it goes.

看似神秘的"接纳预言"实则很简单：当我们认为自己受到其他人喜欢时，我们在他们面前就会表现得更加友善，结果对方也会相应地变得更喜欢我们。当我们认为自己不被他人喜欢时，就会表现得更加冷淡，这样一来，对方就更不喜欢我们了。

这就是一个自我实现预言，因为当我们预期会被他人所接纳时，我们获得了接纳，而当我们预期不被接纳时，就不会被接纳。对于人们为什么会喜欢或不喜欢彼此，上述也是个直观上很有吸引力的解释。但是对心理学家而言，重点是这个解释是事实，还是仅仅是一个"看起来很美"的童话故事。

在这个问题上，把水搅浑的正是所有那些通常的个体和文化差异--有些人更在意来自他人的接纳，有些人天性就比较容易接纳别人--但是让我们暂时把这些放到一边，只考虑两个人，他们在所有方面都一模一样，只除了其中一个预期其他人会接纳他，而另一个人预期其他人会拒绝他。

根据最近发表在《人格和社会心理学公报》上的一篇论文，研究发现，"接纳预言"有一部分得到了有力的证据支持，其他部分则不然。直到现在。

Waterloo大学的Anthony Stinson博士及其同事提出的一个模型中，第一部分是：人们表达出的人际友善可以预测其他人对他们的喜爱程度（Stinson et al., 2009）.对于心理学家而言，这一点是毫无疑问的。人们更喜欢那些真正友好的人，而且他们在30秒内就能对他人的友好程度作出准确的判断。

很高兴见到你

被认为更有争议的一点是预期的接纳是否确实增加了人们表达友善的程度。Stinson等人（2009）对此做了个实验，通过操纵人们对于将要初次见面的另一个人的预期。

他们为该研究征集了28名男性被试，并告知其中的14人他们将要见到一位富有魅力的女子，并且这位女子对于他们将会怎样看待她感到十分紧张和担忧。很自然地，当这些男士发现这名女性在紧张害怕时，他们的感觉相比较而言变好了。这在很大程度上减轻了这些男士对于交谈的焦虑（事实上，独立的观察者判断他们的焦虑程度减轻了大约一半）,并且他们也更加热情了。

与此相对比，另外14名紧张得满手是汗的参与者只得到了他们将要与之交谈的女性的基本信息，没有任何东西可以缓和他们对于被拒绝的恐惧。从而这一操纵产生了两个被试组，其中一组将会预期比另一组得到更多的接纳。

结果显示，当被拒绝的风险降低时，男性会对他们与之交谈的女性表现出更多的热情。而这一额外的友善表现也令得旁观者喜欢他们胜过那些因为恐惧而表现冷淡的男士。

从而，这一结果为接纳预言的正确性提供了证据。在这个实验中，预期会得到接纳的人们的确对陌生人更友善，结果他们也被认为是更加令人喜爱的。

社交乐观主义者或悲观主义者？

然而，该研究结果有个例外。有一小组人没有被实验操纵所影响而提高他们预期被接纳的程度。这是因为他们已经预期会获得接纳。这些人是社交乐观主义者（或者至少是考虑自己比较多的人）.

当然，社交乐观主义者处在一个愉快的立场上，他们预期会获得接纳，并且一般都会发现事实的确如此。然而，社交悲观主义者则面临着术语"自我实现预言"的创造者，社会学家Robert K. Merton所说的"错误支配".预期被拒绝导致对他人更加冷淡、防御性的行为表现，而这一点又反过来导致他们真的被拒绝。"啊哈，"社交悲观主义者咕哝着，"我就知道他们不会喜欢我。"

事情果如他们所言。